March 18, 2017

Trump for single-payer healthcare, by letting both parties prove their plans are catastrophes?

First, let's note that Trump would have to be suicidal to want his name or political brand to be tethered to the fate of the Republican reform of Obamacare.

Without 60 votes in the Senate, there can be no true, substantial repeal of Obamacare nor replacement with entirely new things like selling insurance across state lines. Even if the Senate lowered the bar to a simple majority to pass substantial legislation, there would be enough defecting Republicans (3 would be sufficient) to prevent the bill from landing on the President's desk.

So the only possible outcome is a superficial reform of Obamacare, and since the structural weaknesses of Obamacare are deep, the reformed version would also implode in short order.

Because the Republicans in Congress would have been the last to have touched the healthcare system, they would be easily blamed for its implosion. "It may not have been a perfect system, but at least Obamacare didn't fall to pieces -- you can thank the Republicans for fumbling the pass, causing the healthcare system to shatter into a million broken pieces."

That's why the Democrats and the media are not pushing that hard against Obamacare 2.0 -- just trash-talking the lack of cohesion on the other team, and trying to brag about how great their own plan has been. But not pulling out all stops as they do when Trump threatens something they truly love, like proposing the Muslim ban.

The enemy wants us to be the last party to be seen on camera handling the healthcare system right before it imploded, so that they can own all of the upside of Obamacare (covering the uninsured) and none of the downside (destined to implode). The Party of Stupid will face the opposite fate -- owning none of the upside (they showed heartless obstruction toward covering the uninsured) and all of the downside (their fault it broke if they touched it last).

Fortunately our President is not that stupid, and actually campaigned on not being the typical stupid Republican with typically stupid Republican solutions. He knows damn well how deadly it would be to own a reformed healthcare system that was still destined to implode because not enough votes in the Senate could be garnered in order to pass true, substantial "repeal and replace".

Nor is Trump, like Congressional Republicans, addicted to losing. And taking the blame for Obamacare's inevitable demise would be the ultimate own-goal.

I'm not the blackpill type, and yet I couldn't see what Trump's longer-term goal could have been, given his apparent support for the GOP's healthcare legislation. I didn't want to rush to publish a downer post about how Trump is being led into the abyss by Paul Ryan et al. Then I ran across this from Daniel Horowitz at Conservative Review:

If this bill does not bring immediate relief, and in fact exacerbates the death spiral, the private market, along with GOP political capital, will be dead by 2020. The new regime will never be in place, especially not during the reelection of President Trump. We will either have a massive bail out or a single-payer system by that point.

Of course he says that like single-payer is a bad thing, and why Trump must reverse course. But then Trump is not an ideologue about single-payer, which the True Conservative (TM) crowd never tired of reminding us during the GOP primary. Take this example from February 2016 at Independent Journal Review (going after the closeted gay young Republican audience): "5 times Donald Trump praised socialized healthcare", with examples going from the late '90s through 2015.

Like Horowitz, he wrote that post like it's axiomatic that single-payer is a bad thing, and that's why no true Republican can vote Trump over Bush, Rubio, Cruz, et al.

Trump has never railed against single-payer, only saying it could have worked in an earlier time but not now, when the country is not that different from 2000 when he was praising it in detail. He used to note how much healthier Canadians are, while paying less, even when you control for demographics. He has recently said he "doesn't want" single-payer, but he's not a puritanical ideologue, so perhaps that only means he'll accept that outcome while not being the biggest fan of it.

And it's also possible that, yet again, Trump is playing dumb and letting his enemies destroy themselves, so that he can get his way easily in the aftermath.

The Democrats are bought off by the drug companies, insurance companies, and healthcare providers, so like hell they would ever advance single-payer on their own. Also, they're such kneejerk partisans that, as Trump keeps saying, they'd vote against their own utopia if Trump were the one who gave it to them.

They are easy to dispatch, by pointing out what a disaster Obamacare had always been and would have continued to be. Skyrocketing premiums and deductibles, shrinking choices, etc. -- those began long before the Republican Congress' attempts at reform.

It's the Republican opposition to single-payer that would prove more difficult. He did not defend the idea against True Con types like Ted Cruz during the primaries because he feels like abstract hypothetical debates would not drive the point home to the voters. Trump can point to the better health and lower costs for Canadians and Australians, but then Lyin' Ted can respond that America is different, we can't go for totalitarian government-mandated socialism in healthcare, and so on and so forth.

Trump would get bogged down in pointless debating, and have little to show for it. He might pick up some sympathetic Democrats in the Senate, but he would alienate many more Republicans, not to mention turn off Republican voters for whom single-payer is an abstract taboo topic.

By letting the Republican Establishment -- both the corporate wing and the libertarian wing -- have their way with the reform of Obamacare, Trump can make the case that he's been not only open to their True Con ideas, but has actively encouraged them. He looks like a negotiator in good faith, not an infiltrator and usurper of the Republican orthodoxy. More importantly, he doesn't turn off legions of Republican voters.

But since any version of Obamacare is destined to fail, Trump can let the Republican Establishment prove directly that their plans are just as disastrous as the Democrats'. It will no longer be a hypothetical debate -- I gave you guys in Congress the chance to come up with something great to replace Obamacare, and this is what happens? Folks, it looks like we can't trust the Establishment's plans for healthcare, no matter which side of the aisle it's coming from.

Then with Obamacare / Ryancare having imploded, Trump can use the emergency atmosphere to propose a bold new direction to lead us away from the failed policies of the past from both parties. "We're going to look into" a system like Australia's -- it's not going to be exactly like that of any other country, but they seem to be doing a lot better than we are, so we're going to look into what they're doing that we are not.*

Trump loathes the endless wheel-spinning of adversarial debate (he's not a lawyer), and prefers to Socratically prove that your so-called genius plan is a total horrorshow -- by letting you go right on ahead with it. Then when it blows up in your face, we'll do something different or even the opposite, and get a much better result. It's an experiential take on arguing from a reductio ad absurdum. You're so against single-payer? OK, you're such geniuses, hit us with your best shot in the opposite direction. Gee, that was an utter disaster -- looks like single-payer it is.

If Trump can lead the charge to push for a bold new system after Obamacare / Ryancare implodes, he might just be able to pick up enough liberal Democrats in the Senate to pass 60-vote legislation, or failing that, rope the Republicans into an Australian system in order to preserve what little credibility they will have after passing failing legislation. At that point, they could lower the bar to 50 + Pence, and afford a few defections. Even if an Australian-style system cost him 5 Republicans who think single-payer is tyranny, he would only need to pick up 3 sympathetic Dems like Bernie to hit 50.

Trump has been saying all along that the best thing politically is to do nothing, let Obamacare implode, and then its creators will come begging to the negotiating table.

But then Trump must be thinking the same about the worthless do-nothing Republicans as well -- let them finally get Presidential approval for their discredited corporate / libertarian plans, and then when it blows up and they face losing the Congress in mid-terms or in 2020, they will come begging for Trump to give them a winning replacement -- like the Australian system he has already had in mind for several decades. They will have no choice but to go along with it, and will be rewarded when voters see better quality at lower prices in their healthcare.

Finally, for the Americans who may have ever had a kneejerk reaction against single-payer: ask yourself why your counterparts outside of America are not agitating to destroy their own single-payer system, and why they either make fun of us or take pity on us for not enjoying such a system? They are otherwise 100% on board with the populist / nationalist movement led by Trump and others. So why aren't they harping on "socialized healthcare"?

Probably because it isn't that bad, and at any rate is better than what we have here -- admittedly not a very high bar to clear. As much as they gripe about their own system, they'd never want our own system, unless they're very rich. For everyone else, "how they do it outside America" sure looks like it gets better results at lower prices.

The working-class voters who put Trump over the top, in particular will not have a kneejerk reaction against single-payer. Not that they're kneejerk in favor of it either, like well-to-do progressives. They're simply willing to give it a try, after so many failures of conventional thinking.

Let this be a corrective to the previous post about not expecting much populism in domains where there is not a natural angle about globalism vs. nationalism. If Trump can let both Establishment sides prove their policies are garbage, he's got carte blanche for a bold new populist solution.

* I think Australia would be the best example to point to, since the Republican voters and politicians do not have a kneejerk association of Australia and the Australians with wimpiness, socialism, tyranny, etc. It would be poison to use France or Sweden as the example, for branding reasons only. It would be easier for them to accept a system that is 90% single-payer and 10% private healthcare, since they have no preconceived notions about Australia's healthcare system, but have dystopian views of "European" healthcare due to lobbyist propaganda here in America.

And certainly he would brand it with something other than "single-payer," which is too toxic among Republican voters. He's an expert brander, though, so whatever the phrase is, it'll sell.

Single payer healthcare is the default you get after everything else broke down. Go to any third word country. There medical treatment is only available for the person who pays for the whole cost of it.

I normally agree w/ most of what the author of this blog says, but nobody that has spent time navigating a Canadian ER would have anything less than an allergic reaction to the suggestion of single-payer. It is a fact that they require a massively expanded tax base *and* that they deliver sub-par care.

There is one simple fix for the healthcare problem in the USA: price transparency. That would fix it all, virtually overnight (well, a couple of years as the shake out ripples across the system). Everything else is some lobbyist or pol trying to game the system for his/her own benefit.

Trump the nationalist will be providing zero public healthcare to illegals.

Canadians, even controlling for demographics, among the rest of the first world, have better health stats and lower costs than Americans.

The "long lines" stuff is either lobbyist propaganda or true but irrelevant. If we speed people through getting onto a bogus regimen of drugs, which cost through the roof, that's worse than a longer process of getting onto the right drugs at cheaper prices.

Trump voters do not resonate with phrases like "the soul of America" -- that's the True Con types who preferred Lyin' Ted.

The white working class in the industrial Midwest is not going to mind giving single-payer a try, when it's properly re-branded by Trump -- focusing on Australia, say, rather than Canada or France or Sweden.

That is the observable effect, though. Wherever state healthcare exists bureaucracies trip over themselves to spend tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars because some freak wants his dick cut off, and it goes without saying brown people are never expected to pay for anything ever.

Trump just got done praising Germany for their education system that prioritizes useful skills rather than pointlessly feeding every kid into higher ed.

But then Trump also excoriates Germany for their suicidal immigration policy.

He is a pragmatist, looking for areas where America is sub-standard and other first-world countries are better, and trying to copy what they are doing.

True Con types justify the states' rights approach by its "laboratories of democracy" appeal. Some states try this, other states try that, and better solutions can be found, allowing those states with bad outcomes to mimic the good solutions hit upon by other states.

That applies at the national level as well. The entire first world has conducted an experiment in healthcare systems over generations, and it's clear that the American way is worse than the others. We're far less healthy and we pay far higher prices -- I call that a magic act.

Trump will not be pitching single-payer in a cosmopolitan globalist way, as Bernie would -- "joining the rest of the civilized world," who btw are opening the floodgates to the barbarians. That's the message that Europe is inherently superior to America, and appeals mostly to insecure liberal snobs here.

It would be in that pragmatic way of "Let's see if other countries happen to do it better than we do in some area".

Trump keeps demanding lower drug prices, threatening to use the leverage that the US government is the largest purchaser of drugs, yet pays retail rather than wholesale prices.

Take that to its logical conclusion -- when it is 90% of the purchaser, it will have even more weight to throw around at the negotiating table, and we are going to bend the drug, insurance, and hospital companies over the table. They'll still make a profit, just not becoming richer than God.

This is also in the front of Trump's mind when he talks about bilateral vs. multilateral trade deals. He knows it's easier for the big guy to screw over many little guys separately, whereas the TPP was the third world countries banding together as a whole to throw their collective weight around against us.

Switching roles, the isolated individual healthcare consumers will be represented by a great big national-level agent who will be able to negotiate much better deals from the drug, insurance, and hospital industries.

I wonder if he'll go with the existing phrase "Medicare for all". Obviously it would frighten the corporate Republican politicians, but they no longer have a voter base. Rank-and-file Republican voters insist on preserving Medicare, and those who are too young still look forward to enjoying its benefits.

Not many governmental programs have a good approval rating from the general public, and Medicare is one of them.

It would also force the hand of liberal Dems to either put up or shut up -- especially Bernie, who nearly wore the phrase out during his campaign.

And avoiding branding that mentions another country ("Aussie Care" etc.) would head off charges of globalism against the nationalist President.

What Trump should so is let Medicare negotiate drug prices with companies, and then tell European countries they have to set their prices to those that Medicare has negotiated.

European countries are able to barter with drug companies and secure low prices for European consumers. Then U.S. drug prices go up to subsidize them. It’s time for European and American drug prices to reach parity, and if Europe doesn’t like it, then we should stop subsidizing their defense and withdraw from NATO.

You've thought deeply about this and I appreciate it, Ag. My biggest worry was the politics of not doing anything, but you've alleviated my concerns on that; he's *not* not doing anything and things are playing out swimmingly; TrueCons are getting boo'd off the stage.

The big tell that he is not wedded to Ryancare was when he agreed in an interview with the idea that this Ryancare bill went completely against the interests of his base ("I know"). But then quickly added there would be lots of negotiating...

Trump's big challenge will be to appear as good faith as possible and keep those tells to a minimum because the Enemy will look to exploit in order to divide as you alluded to.

Another point. The implosion would allow politicians, and perhaps even voters, a chance *to save face* for such a dramatic reversal. Let me briefly explain. I don't remember who it was that said it, but it was brilliant: Ron Paul and his anti-GWBush-initiated War on Terror simply could not expect people to quickly come on board as it constituted to dramatic a reversal and people have to have time for such a thing.

The WoT is a little different as it was more about convincing people they had been wrong and the man they voted for was wrong, whereas healthcare is more abstract and has many fathers.

Kaus' idea is to lower the age for Medicare to 55, taking the least healthy off of Obamacare and into Medicare, allowing Obamacare to be given to relatively more healthy people. Then if it still fails, expand Medicare towards Medicare-for-all, or if Obamacare / Ryancare works, leave Medicare at age 55+.

It sounds nice, but I doubt that Trump could wrangle both Dems and Repubs into getting 60 votes for that to pass in "phase 3" (substantial legislation, beyond the budgetary stuff allowed by reconciliation, which only needs 50 + Pence).

There has to be a real blow-up for either side, let alone both sides, to feel motivated enough to sit down and hammer out a deal.

Until then, Dems are content to praise Obamacare and blame Repubs for whatever goes wrong after Obamacare 2.0 kicks in. And Repubs are content to slam Obamacare while patting themselves on the back for Obamacare 2.0, which is about to implode before it's even signed into law.

When the ultimate failure arrives, people will have had enough of healthcare business as usual. Trump will demand that liberal Dems put up or shut up about protecting everyone, and that business-oriented Republicans do what's best for employers and get healthcare off of their balance sheets.

Those are just words, though, until a major catastrophe brings both sides to the table.

And it's not that Trump maliciously intends for healthcare to implode -- it is destined to do that, and without 60 votes, there's nothing that can be truly done to avoid it. He's making the best of a bad situation -- we inherited a big fat mess -- by using the inevitable blow-up to usher in a leaner, cheaper, higher-quality system (Medicare for all).

Ultimately I feel that this new bill is designed to make Trump look like an idiot. Trump pushed jobs and immigration as his key issues but his third issue was repealing and replacing Obamacare. This new bill is designed to screw him over either way: if Trump endorses what amounts to Diet Obamacare, it will look like he betrayed his voters who wanted something different; if Trump rejects the bill, then Trump does not look like he is in control and therefore can be considered a weak President. This is Ryan's political calculus.

A middle ground solution could be bringing back the public option instead of going full single payer. Have the organization run like a business instead of a bunch of diversity hires and careerist bureaucrats. The public option, if managed correctly, will force insurance companies to compete with the public option, which will result in lower prices across the board, causing premiums to drop. The public option can negotiate drug prices so there again will be the opportunity for cheaper drug prices. Insurance companies will have to dramatically restructure themselves to be more nimble, efficient, and accountable. So people can pay less money for better quality health insurance.

"Wherever state healthcare exists bureaucracies trip over themselves to spend tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars because some freak wants his dick cut off"

Another clueless libertarian who thinks that corporate tyrannies are not 100% on board with uber-liberal social and cultural agendas. Disney is just compelled by the state to push maximum poz in all children's entertainment...

Your beloved private-sector saviors, the HMOs, consider dick-chopping "medically necessary" as long as the tranny is 18, gets two letters of referral from a pozzed professional, and has taken hormone therapy for 12 months:

http://www.aetna.com/cpb/medical/data/600_699/0615.html

What about dick-chopping plus pseudo-vag put in its place? Well that just requires living a woman's lifestyle for 12 months to get the person used to their new role.

Remember that trannies think "living like a woman" means fondling their tits in front of a mirror while slowly licking their lips -- not nurturing children and keeping house.

Jesus Christ, they even consider it "medically necessary" for tranny adolescents to take puberty-suppressing drugs!

Mega-corporations like Aetna (top 50 in Fortune 500) are bloated bureaucracies just like the government -- only with 100% pozzed leadership, and no democratic check on their social-cultural programs from conservative people at the grassroots level.

That's why there is decent conservative representation in the House of Representatives, but zero conservative representation in the Fortune 500, on social-cultural issues.

Libertarian utopia: 60 year-old man visits HMO to complain about lowering his premiums because he doesn't want to subsidize some dick-chopping flamer, gets shame stares from the non-white staff and puzzled looks from the illegals who don't understand English.

When he insists that he isn't leaving until he can negotiate a way around paying for someone else's dick-chopping, he is beaten to a pulp by PRIVATE security, and told his facial reconstruction will not be covered under his plan.

Let's not forget the Chamber of Commerce et al doing far more than others to bribe lawyers and politicians into flooding America with invaders. Follow the money. Some crank 70 year old academic trying to destroy Western civilization is only going to have so much influence.

Older generations have gleefully been shoving diversity (whether by AA, higher immigration levels, or encouraging a "free agent" aka mercenary mentality) down everyone's throat to assuage guilt over the idea that whites had it good in the 40's, 50's, and 60's because they took so much from non-whites.

Whites who grow up in a cynical culture with buffoonish absentee leaders don't feel like being bashed over the head with "white privilege" propaganda. Besides, the sheer whiteness of Boomers probably causes some resentment with younger generations; instead of having kids and keeping neighborhoods, schools, workplaces, etc. strong via homogeneity, you focused on climbing to the top and munching on popcorn as younger and far more diverse generations were pitted against each other.

Part of the '86 immigration act dealt with punishing those who hired illegals. Regardless of what one thinks about the act granting legal status to millions of illegals, the fact is that labor practices of companies are largely determined by the ethics and goals of those who run them. And sure enough:

"The hiring process also changed as employers turned to indirect hiring through subcontractors. "Under a subcontracting agreement, a U.S. citizen or resident alien contractually agrees with an employer to provide a specific number of workers for a certain period of time to undertake a defined task at a fixed rate of pay per worker".[6] "By using a subcontractor the firm is not held liable since the workers are not employees. The use of a subcontractor decreases a worker's wages since a portion is kept by the subcontractor. This indirect hiring is imposed on everyone regardless of legality".[6]"

- Flout pre-existing legislation with little to no accountability- Push for different legislation that enabled their greed- Get away with impoverishing and degrading workers to an ever increasing degree

Pro-diversity sentimental propaganda about "giving back" to non-whites is just feel-good nonsense designed to hide corruption and a lack of good faith.

The 4th paragraph came off weird. What I meant was that business owners are elites who, if they damn well feel like it, can get whatever kind of legislation they want. Or can get political elites to ignore enforcement of stronger laws. Or can get away with cynically bending and breaking laws.

This is all the more true in a high striving era. If business owners really hated diversity measures that much, they could've banded together ages ago to junk AA and discourage alien labors. Never happened after the mid 70's. Eventually, proles get so fed up that populist leaders sense a change in the mood and began cracking skulls 'til everyone gets a clue.

One major problem with using "Medicare for all" is that it makes people think of the kinds and the amount of healthcare given to old people, now given to everyone.

Costs would explode, lines would be infinite, etc.

Except people in their 40s are not about to kick the bucket, would not over-burden the system, and so on.

Ann Coulter freaked out at her BFF Mickey Kaus for proposing "Medicare for 55+" using those arguments. But as Kaus points out, younger people are healthier and cheaper to cover than 65+.

"Medicare for all" as a phrase would only appeal to those who enjoy wearing grandpa sweaters and granny shoes.

"Aussie care" still suffers from non-American branding...

How about "All-American healthcare"?

It stands in place of "universal," which has already been tainted by Hillary, and also sounds too globalist.

But it also says it's not only some Americans who will benefit -- it will be Americans of every level, and NONE who are not American.

The main theme being looking out for and taking care of our own, and using our collective strength to negotiate better deals against the brutal vicious killers that the drug companies, insurance companies, and health provider companies will be sending to the bargaining table.

Here's the one time when Trump gave the standard corporate Republican talking points about single-payer, during the 2nd debate against Crooked Hillary:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gg-DAtyXL_s

Seems like it was not sincere, either just trying to score against his opponent, or to not ruffle any feathers with Republican voters just before the election and just after the Access Hollywood tape had come out.

I think early in the primary he sensed how much pushback there would be if he ran "to the left" of the other GOPers, and even Clinton, on too many big issues. Run to the left on trade, run to the right on immigration, call it even.

Once he's in office, then he can start to run to the left on more issues, but only after letting the Right prove their solutions don't work. They cannot debate their own failures, so the people will have more of an open mind when Trump proposes things in the direction of single-payer.

It won't be an argument on the merits, since Republican politicians and most GOP voters will argue against on the merits. It will be "We tried everything, and look at what a mess we've gotten into. Time for bold new thinking."

Public healthcare would probably work fine in a morally functional, cohesive society with a stable or growing population. Then you get into funding abortions and "sex reassignment surgeries," shelling out for the morbidly obese, and facing an aging population, and it loses some luster.

We can also expect to see Trump de-moralizing the topic of healthcare, as he has so many other issues.

It's all about achieving the best results at the lowest costs, pragmatic and utilitarian, not laden with values and ideologies (unlike "the soul of America").

The progs have tried to do this on the healthcare issue, arguing for the greater efficiency of single-payer over the current mess, far lower overhead costs in Medicare vs. private schemes, using collective bargaining to get wholesale prices, and so on and so forth.

Those are the Bernie-supporting progs who don't care that much about signaling values and the culture war.

But getting the best bang for the buck is not part of their overall brand -- only in this case or another. It comes off more as a rationalization, or pandering to conservatives / Republicans to get them on board with single-payer, as though their true motivation were to make us into a Scandi-socialist utopia.

They don't care, for instance, how much money is wasted on education -- more dollars per student doesn't make them smarter, earn more, etc. At best keeps them better fed with free lunches.

Or spending $100K for a BS degree from a BS college -- they just complain that someone else ought to be covering those costs. Spending shitloads of money in higher ed is a good thing for progs.

So along comes Mr. Cost Efficiency who wants to drive down how much taxpayers are forking over to Boeing and other defense contractors, as well as drug companies, NPR, German defense, etc.

If a single-payer-ish plan comes from Trump, it'll be seen within the broader context and backdrop of negotiating killer deals to give us a better bang for the buck, which requires flexing our muscle at the national level.

A governor can't take on a company that wants to move out of the country, but a president could.

States cannot stand up to the insurance, drug, HMO companies, but a national single-payer group could.

Then it won't sound phony like it does coming from spendthrifts like Bernie & co. People will pay attention, treat it as sincere, and be on board with it.

Likewise no one any longer believes that Republicans are budget hawks -- only when it comes to lobbying groups who don't vote for them, like education, entertainment, etc. Otherwise, here's some free money for Lockheed Martin.

Democrats are budget hawks only when it comes to lobbying groups who don't vote for them -- military contractors, energy companies, etc. Otherwise here's some free money for the media.

Trump has been across-the-board in his budget hawkishness, putting both Democrat and Republican lobbying bigwigs on the chopping block.

He is the only one who anyone will believe is "looking into" single-payer in order to get more bang for our buck.

"Then you get into funding abortions and "sex reassignment surgeries," shelling out for the morbidly obese, and facing an aging population, and it loses some luster."

What is the alternative?

HMO mega-corps like Aetna already cover dick-chopping and pseudo-vag surgeries. They also cover elective abortions, so eagerly that they're willing to pay million-dollar fines when they provide them to women who don't qualify (liberalizing policy in conservative states like Missouri):

Corporate propagandists have so thoroughly brainwashed conservatives that they believe corporate board members, CEOs, and the like are a bunch of stodgy starched-collar Monopoly-monocled old white guys, who would never support tranny surgeries, elective late-term abortions, insulin pumps to people who drink sugar at every meal (and in between), and on and on down the liberal line.

Wealth and power corrupt, so the elites will never be conservative on social and cultural issues.

Getting back to Trump's own views and plans, what other major issue has he spoken on behalf of for decades, often against the received wisdom, only to drop suddenly like a hot potato?

Nothing, really.

De-industrialization -- since the 1980s, still the same position.

Middle Eastern wars -- since Iraq War.

And on and on.

The only thing he's changed on is abortion, a social-cultural issue rather than a political-economic one. And as Roger Stone suggested, one where he had a life-altering experience -- Melania getting pregnant when Trump was around 60 years old, both of them deciding to go with it, and Baron becoming the apple of his father's eye. (Trump says this is the reason, but says it happened to "a friend," who Stone surmises is Trump himself.)

As far as we know, there's been no life-altering experience about healthcare that would make him look down on single-payer. As recently as early 2015, he was offering real-life anecdotes *in favor* of it (Scotland).

When asked to defend his views at the first Fox primary debate, he just brushed it off, rather than give a long sincere story about what changed his mind, let alone speak out against single-payer like he did against abortion on demand throughout the campaign (from the "woman must be punished" thing before Wisconsin primary, to graphic description of baby being ripped out of womb during first debate against Clinton).

Conclusion: it's still his preferred goal, and the only things left to figure out are whether single-payer accounts for 70-80-90%, what the nature of the remainder is, who does he have to woo on the Dems' side, how to calm down Republican voters / politicians who have equated single-payer with Satanism, and other details of execution.

I don't claim, and never will, that our present corporate overlords are anything resembling good or benevolent. But it isn't their doing that you can't open a "no darkies, no fags" insurance agency, which would save enormous sums of money. That's the government's doing. I don't want to subsidize degenerative leftists and their mud-colored pets any further than I already am forced to.

Another clueless libertarian who thinks the mega-corps would allow you to open a competitor business of any kind -- they want to swallow up all businesses for themselves.

Just look at Aetna trying to buy up Humana recently, which thankfully got blocked.

You are hopelessly deluded if you think that Aetna, Humana, et al. would allow you to open that business without running wall-to-wall ads about what a horrible racist competitor you are, and why individuals, employers, corporate boards, and governments ought to boycott you and drive you into bankruptcy.

And those ads would be far more effective than the ham-fisted political ads -- they would be funded by immense corporate coffers hiring the most sophisticated Madison Ave firms.

Wake up: the people who control mega-corporations are more uber-liberal than the average national politician, and have no democratic check from conservative citizens below.

Let's do a simple thought experiment. We will never get discrimination by race in the insurance sector, no matter what. But national origin is very possible, especially in the Trump era.

Which model is more likely to exclude all non-citizens from its services? -- a national single-payer system, or private firms?

The national system would be accountable to citizens, pressured by them through politicians, and in all likelihood brought into being by a nationalist fervor. "We want great things, but not if outsiders would parasitize us."

The private system only sees green. They don't care where you come from, if they themselves or someone else can funnel money into your coffers via a customer.

They actively cheer along globalist colonization of the first world because it increases the demand for their goods and services, raising consumer prices and corporate profits.

It will never be the private sector that pioneers the way in nationalism, only a hostile takeover of the government by citizens can do that.

"We will never get discrimination by race in the insurance sector, no matter what."

Strange, that didn't seem to be the case at all until ~50 years ago. It certainly isn't the case with insurance in any nonwhite country civilized enough to possess it. It's only a rather small portion of the world that pretends race is irrelevant.

And why would politicians do that? Basically all the Dems in leadership roles now are from safe majority mud or uber-cuck SWPL districts. They know better than anyone that all they have to do to get a permanent majority (until things just deteriorate to the point society stops working) is wait and pander. Every kind of nonwhite votes Dem by huge margins, and will forever unless some even more lefty party comes along.

I think they're all pseudo-libertarian, while local, small-business owners are conservative. There are some conservatives in the F. 500, but they're very quiet and cucked. They like having their own institutions: http://winst.org/about/trustees/Maybe they realize most of their friends and peers became neoliberals in college, and so give up on mainstream organized society. I had never heard of the Witherspoon Institute, or Witherspoon himself, until encountering their website recently. Their prominence is nill- I want to read their books, but it took years to find them. Meanwhile, they work really hard to write those books barely anyone reads.

I think their desire to "exit" the prog. system, while still interfacing with it for status, money, and everything else, is a big part of cuckservativism.

The main part, though, is playing by inconsistent, unfair rules set by opponents, and scoring own-goals. I also think all cucks are easily cowed and tricked.

There are in fact Amish-style mutual aid societies where people have no corporate insurance, but share medical costs within the group, sometimes over the internet. These people are saving money now, even if their catastrophic risks are higher.

"Wealth and power corrupt, so the elites will never be conservative on social and cultural issues."

This is why so many people are becoming monarchists. Why give the unaccountable elites vast power, when a king could lead everyone?

Conserving existing values and conventions is not something which the lower classes can force upwards. The elites do have out-sized influence, and this is mostly because they network more and work harder than others do to accomplish their goals. Most people in my church, unpleasantly many of whom are elite, even meeting with Trump as candidates to join his cabinet, don't know their congressional representatives or attend city council meetings, because they're lazy, globalist elites, and happy with the status quo. As transplants, they don't care about local politics, which makes me think transplants have no right to local suffrage, for 5 years or even longer in their new place of residence. Don't forget how many people don't want anything to change, and obstruct true progress, but would have already done the right thing if they really wanted to.

"We will never get discrimination by race in the insurance sector, no matter what."

Medicines for specific races, and personal genomics, if it ever happens, will change that. We could already have race-specific medicine, more than the few which have been approved, if it weren't a taboo. So the supply could create demand for itself, the way everyone wants a smartphone before even knowing how they work. I wonder how actuaries see the future healthcare funding and providing.

"It will never be the private sector that pioneers the way in nationalism, only a hostile takeover of the government by citizens can do that."

Private charities and militias traditionally are nationalist, but their constitutionality is denied by globalists, and globalists have mostly won that contest of wills and philosophies. It's strange that most nationalists can't imagine a libertarian/ non-centralized nationalism, only the kind of system that globalists like, statism. I guess the idea is that statism is inevitable in modernity, and the best system, because it's the easiest to do and most vulnerable to take-over, which nationalists like because they want to take power from the globalists, not realizing this means it could be taken back right away. An earnest Western nationalist tends to expatriate these days, or at least dream of doing so.

And you're ignoring the obvious -- that politicians from safe non-white districts don't get good healthcare, etc. for their constituents. The non-white politicians are more corrupt, greedy, and therefore easily bought-off by corporate lobbyists.

The Obamacare people had the White House plus a supermajority in the Senate -- and where was single-payer? Even a public option? Corporate lobbyists bought off Jew Lieberman who threatened to filibuster the public option.

They had a unique alignment of the stars, and all they wound up doing was expanding Medicaid a little bit.

Majority minority status (already achieved in under 5s) is all that is needed. Immigration can go to zero tomorrow and minority births be cut in half, and it wouldn't make a lick of difference. They need only wait for those little kids to reach voting age.

Look at the stats on Texas children, just as one example. They've already been replaced. And the guy who won't simply tell some faggot judge in Hawaii that his ruling is blatantly illegal and the travel ban will still be enforced is going to deport the majority of America's children? Pull the other one.

Your complaining is rather apocalyptic. That seems ignorant, given that civilization has always been improbable, and every country has enemies. Life goes on- there was a so-called healthcare crisis in the early 80's, when costs were only half of what they are today. People were freaked out, and thought the system would collapse or something. Did it?

Or did we just medicalize our society, which means hypochondria became normal, and now people don't even admit humanity is frail and mortal in this life? I think the big-picture issues are corporatization and .forced charity, which go hand in hand, not racial conflicts or fertility rates. Japan was supposed to crash by now- they're "too old." It's like people worship youth, and think children power society;s present, not just the future. But the Japanese are doing better in many valuable ways than youthful Pakistan or Nigeria. And obviously, big political changes take time. Self-deportation has already begun.

and nothing says hispanics are always going to vote the same way as they do in the 2010s. or identify exactly the same way ethnically/racially for that matter. Intermarriage between mestizos and white people is up. and a lot of us ID as "white hispanic." or castizo. or something else. hispanics are complicated.

"Hispanics" includes whites who are reliable voters, and masses of Amerindians who could not be more apathetic (just like they are back home in elections).

I see white Hispanics becoming the new Italians -- assimilating into American norms, identifying as Americans first, ethnics second, and being swing voters or bellwether voters rather than staunchly loyal to one party or the other.